Royal London Hospital. Pic: Atelier Joly.
Barts Health Trust is gearing up for a Care Quality Commission inspection, which is scheduled to take place this month.
This follows last month’s “intelligent monitoring” report from the watchdog, which listed Barts Health as one of the “highest priority trusts” to be inspected.
The monitoring process groups the 160 acute NHS trusts in England into six priority bands, with band one representing the highest priority trusts and band six, the lowest.
The bands are based on the likelihood that people may not be receiving “safe, effective, high quality care”, the CQC explains.
Barts Health NHS Trust, which covers the boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Newham, is joined by five other priority trusts in the band one category.
A spokesperson of Barts Health NHS Trust confirmed that it will be working very closely with the CQC during the inspection, but could not comment further until after the inspection.
Barts Health Trust has recently faced “significant financial challenges”, according to its last inspection report, which was published in 2014.
It has been a “persistent outlier on some key quality of care indicators”, such as poor results on patient and staff surveys and non-compliance with CQC regulations, the report states.
But the report also concluded that services at Barts Health were generally safe, with clean and well-maintained hospitals. It also added that the risk of infection is minimised.
However, CQC warned that the trust must take action in areas of skilled staff sufficiency, adolescent care, readily available equipment and sufficient supply of nutritious food for patients.
This year’s inspection will reveal whether there have been changes in the Trust’s operations since last year.
CQC has said that it aims not to rank trusts through “intelligent monitoring” but to assess the best way to inspect trusts. This is to ensure that they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety.
The CQC uses local information from partners and the public through its intelligent monitoring process to decide when, where and what to inspect.
